This year’s Business Leadership Report is a ‘must-have’ for any provider that wants to know what its clients are really thinking when it comes to selling legal services. The report focuses on the growing range of alternative legal services and innovations provided by both traditional firms and new model law entrants. It quizzes clients on their attitudes towards these services, their uptake of them and pinpoints which are head and shoulders above the rest... Read more

An exhaustive analysis of the UK market including every firm in the top 200 ranked, analysed and benchmarked, UK chambers ranked by turnover, revenue per barrister and which international firms are most active in the UK.

Transport workers’ union the GMB has instructed Leigh Day to bring an employment claim against taxi-booking service Uber, arguing that it is in breach of a duty to provide drivers with basic employment rights.

The Pensions Regulator has published research which shows that large DC schemes are demonstrating a far greater degree of compliance with the Regulator’s DC quality features than small and medium-sized schemes.

There has been a raft of recent cases where the Health and Safety Executive has successfully prosecuted individuals and firms who have permitted staff and others to suffer injury while working at height.

TUPE applies where a client decides to engage a new service provider instead of an existing one, but what if the client instructs the existing service provider to remove an employee from the contract before the TUPE transfer takes place?

When personalities collide at work they can create considerable difficulty. Such cases may therefore cause an employer to consider the dismissal of one, both or all parties. But how can an employer do so fairly?

The difficulty in TUPE transfers in deciding which employees are transfered to the new employer if the client has given an express instruction that it does not want a particular employee to continue to work on the contract.

The next two weeks is likely to see the sharpest increase in the number of claims being submitted to the Employment Tribunal than at any time since the introduction of the fees regime back in July 2013.

Your sponsorship licence may be at risk if you do not keep up with the immigration paperwork. The recent case outlined here serves as a cautionary tale and highlights the need to have tight controls in place.

In the first of a two-part series Wragges takes a look at whether a US stock-option-linked non-compete clause will be effective to restrain an executive in a UK subsidiary. There is a good chance the answer is no.

On the topic of immigration there is rarely a moment for pause and with migration issues at the forefront of the political agenda we expect to see more of the same. Eversheds sets out some recent items that may be of interest.

If in the course of an action the pursuer applies for and obtains an interim interdict preventing the defender from carrying out a particular activity, it is said that the pursuer obtains that order at their own risk.

Wragges looks at what is to be in the new government’s legislative programme, what was mentioned in the campaign but has not made it this far and what was done in the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015.

In Williams and Leeds United Football Club the High Court considered whether the claimant was entitled to be paid 12 months’ notice pay, despite having been found by his employer to have sent pornographic images to three individuals five years earlier.

The EAT gave the first appellate decision on the meaning of the words ’public interest, which were added to whistleblowing legislation in order to exclude whistleblowing complaints based solely on breaches of a worker’s own contract of employment.

A Paris employment tribunal has landed Dentons with a €60,000 damages bill after finding that the firm unlawfully made a secretary redundant immediately prior to the 2013 merger between legacy Salans and SNR Denton.

Louise McCartney commented on the ECJ’s decision to restore the approach that collective consultation with unions or employee representatives is required only where 20 or more redundancies are proposed at the same establishment.

The EAT has recently ruled that for the purpose of the TUPE Service Provision Change rules in certain circumstances a ‘client’ is not limited to one legal entity and can include a group of clients who act in concert.

Serjeants’ Inn Chambers employment team is led by Neil Davy. Our silks and juniors practice across all aspects of employment law and the team acts for a wide variety of clients, advising on both contentious and not contentious matters.

Fieldfisher is facing a €120,000 (£86,000) unfair dismissal claim brought by a former secretary in its Paris office, who claims that she was assaulted by the firm’s office managing partner on the day of her dismissal.

The maximum compensatory award for unfair dismissal will rise from £76,574 to £78,335 and the maximum amount of a week’s pay, used to calculate statutory redundancy payments and the basic award for unfair dismissal will rise from £464 to £475.

It had previously been thought that a worker’s request would not be reasonable if the choice of companion was unreasonable (and this was reflected in the ACAS Code) but in the case of Toal and another v GB Oils Ltd, the Employment Appeal Tribunal held that a worker’s right to choose their companion (within the statutory categories) is absolute.

While the Employment Tribunal is the most common forum for resolving employment disputes, it is not uncommon for senior, highly paid or bonused employees to bring contractual claims against employers in the civil courts.

But the decision in Braithwaite and others v HCL Insurance BPO Services Ltd shows that while certain changes may indirectly discriminate, so long as the employer can show the changes are justified it will have a valid defence.

The Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill will insert a new provision into the Companies Act 2006 requiring companies to maintain a register of people with ‘significant control’ over the company.

Spot the signs: 40% of fraudsters live beyond their means while 30% are known to be in financial difficulties. These and other insights in this Canadian report could help HR professionals combat fraud.

It’s unlikely that anyone has managed to avoid hearing about the ‘fracas’ which took place between Jeremy Clarkson and a BBC producer. Employers across the UK are regularly faced with similar unexpected incidents.

Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) and Gibson Dunn & Crutcher partner Lord Falconer are the latest names to be added to the roster of lawyers defending Asda against an equal pay claim brought by thousands of female employees.

The High Court has delivered a remedies judgment on the practical effect of IBM breaching its duty breach of good faith towards its employees by purporting to make various changes to its pension scheme in a project known as ‘Project Waltz’.

A quick update on some issues being addressed by the drafting committee of the Uniform Law Commission, including gift cards, using payroll cards as uncashed payroll, regulation of insurance benefis and statutes of limitation on audits.

A new feature of our briefing is to keep you appraised of open consultations and surveys in the employment law arena. If you would like us to respond to a consultation on your behalf, please let us know.

You may be forgiven for thinking that as of 27 February 2015, the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996 (the Act), has little effect in terms of its payment and adjudication provisions.

Employers often post new procedures in the workplace without providing formal training. A recent decision of the Ontario Labour Relations Board suggests that for some procedures posting is not enough; rather, training is required.

An Ontario court has dismissed charges under the Occupational Health and Safety Act after two incidents that the joint health and safety committeee did not identify as posing a “high priority” safety concern.

With sick days costing UK business nearly £29bn each year, and with an estimated 960,000 employees on sick leave for a month or more each year, the government has turned its attention to helping people return to work after an illness.

With an increase in the number of dual-income households in Canada, it is not surprising that employers are facing growing demands from workers for flexible work regimes that allow for the fulfilment of childcare obligations.

When Woolworths went bust at the end of 2008, not only was it a watershed moment for UK retail, but it set in motion potentially significant implications for employers proposing large-scale redundancies.

In this case, the Employment Appeal Tribunal considered whether a tribunal had erred in awarding a payment in lieu of a worker’s unused holiday allowance from previous leave years on the termination of his employment.

The advocate general considers that the UK can legitimately limit the threshold for redundancies necessitating collective consultation to those where 20 or more redundancies are proposed at a ‘single establishment’.

The Ontario Labour Relations Board has held that where an employer had complied with a Ministry of Labour (MOL) inspector’s compliance orders, the operation of the orders should not be suspended while the employer appeals.

Ontario’s Divisional Court has decided that the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act’s age cut-off for loss of earnings benefits for older workers did not violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Employers are currently focused on having the correct policies and forms in place for shared parental leave but they should not overlook the fact that there are a number of additional changes to adoption and parental leave due to come into force from 5 April 2015.

We reported in our June newsletter on the European case in which a Danish childminder (Mr Kaltoft) brought a claim against his local authority arguing that his obesity amounted to a disability under the Equal Treatment Directive.

As part of the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill 2014-2015, Regulations will be introduced in April 2016 to require public sector employees or office holders earning more than £100,000 p.a. to repay exit payments on a pro rata basis if they return to the same part of the public sector within 12 months.

A new government survey intended to assess the potential uptake of shared parental leave (ShPL) has reported that 83 per cent of those planning to become parents in the future would consider taking shared parental leave.

Governor Jerry Brown signed 930 bills during the 2014 session, the most in a single year since he took office in 2011. He also vetoed 143 bills, or about 13 per cent of the total that were sent to him.

A requirement is to be introduced that Saudi nationals remain with their employers for at least six months as opposed to three, before companies can count them towards their Saudisation classification.

Regulations that would have made employees of third-party home care agencies ineligible for the Fair Labor Standards Act’s (FLSA) companionship exemption from minimum wage and overtime pay have been struck down.

A skills gap could hamper the recruitment efforts of companies and leave some vacancies unfilled next year, a new study suggests.
The warning comes despite the intention among half the firms surveyed to recruit more staff over the coming 12 months.
The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) asked 323 firms about their recruitment plans for 2015.
Click on the link below to read the rest of the BP Collins briefing.

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has confirmed that obesity may be a disability where it: ‘entails a limitation resulting in particular from long-term physical, mental or psychological impairments’.

The government has announced changes to the law which will limit claims for deductions from pay filed on or after 1 July 2015 to deductions which occurred in the two-year period before the claim is filed.

The case of FOA (Kaltoft) v Billund (C-354/13) is the first time the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has considered issues concerning obesity-based discrimination. More specifically, it has looked at whether obesity can be classed as a ‘disability’ under the Equal Treatment Directive.

An employer that unreasonably takes disciplinary action against an employee may clearly be at risk of a claim for unfair dismissal. However, could they also face personal injury claims if the employee’s health suffers as a result?

In a market that has become synonymous with change it is no coincidence (to us at least) that in the past three months we have been asked to help recruit IT directors into four successful, innovative law firms.

Employees represented by lawyers from Minster Law and Thompsons have secured a groundbreaking Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) decision over whether pay for overtime should be including in holiday pay.

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer’s new heads of corporate, litigation and employment are looking stateside in a bid to hang on to the lead created by former litigation head Christopher Pugh and corporate head Ed Braham.

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has chosen German partner Rick van Aerssen as the firm’s new corporate head to replace Edward Braham and litigation partner David Scott to succeed Christopher Pugh in a “radical” reshuffle.

It has emerged that Fieldfisher and its former data privacy head Eduardo Ustaran turned to arbitration to settle a dispute over his exit for Hogan Lovells, after the partner was accused of breaching the firm’s partnership agreement.

A recent decision considered what offences should be disclosed in a DBS check. Caraline Johnson explores what this might mean for charities and social enterprises working with children and vulnerable adults.

Several Slater & Gordon partners, including legacy Pannone managing partner Emma Holt, have been named as respondents in a two-week unfair dismissal hearing that is due to begin on 20 October at Manchester Employment Tribunal.

Who’d have predicted that 18 years after the Employment Rights Act 1996 came into force, tribunals would be hearing unfair dismissal cases about employees clicking ‘Like’ on this thing called ‘Facebook’.

Asking relatives to lend a helping hand with your business is quite different from recruiting somebody from the outside. What additional considerations are needed before hiring kith and kin and is it wise to choose family?

A dispute over redundancy payments illustrates that where it becomes established custom and practice to pay employees whose contracts are ended more than the statutory minimum, even where the practice is discretionary, this can become an implied contractual entitlement.

Last week the bound version of the Finance Act 2014 thudded onto my desk. Not an exciting publication and, for the uninitiated, about as satisfying to read as the London telephone directory (and perhaps a little less useful).

The subject of holiday in employment law has been somewhat of a moveable feast, with a number of high-profile court decisions in recent years, both at domestic and European level, resulting in a number of changes in the law.

Fieldfisher tax and structuring head Graeme Nuttall is among a small group of lawyers to have been named in this year’s Queen’s Birthday Honours list, becoming an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE).

The recent case of Briggs and others v Gleeds (Head Office) and others serves as a reminder of the potential dangers of failing to comply with the statutory rules on how parties to a deed should execute it.

Former Clarkson Wright & Jakes partner Leslie Seldon has pursued a seven-year legal battle against his former firm, which included a trip to the Supreme Court. Yesterday, the Employment Appeal Tribunal signalled the end of the road for the case. Katy Dowell reports

The Federal Court of Appeal has confirmed that the ground of discrimination due to family status under the Canadian Human Rights Act includes parental obligations which engage a parent’s legal responsibility for a child, such as childcare obligations.

The FIDIC Conditions require the contractor to give notice of a claim for extension of time not later than 28 days after the contractor became aware of the event or circumstances giving rise to the claim.

For many businesses around the world, franchising is the most efficient, profitable path to growth. Whether you are a start-up company or a mature establishment, Dentons understands the franchise industry and its diverse legal needs.

Dentons’ global employment and labour group includes more than 200 lawyers, spread across our offices, who regularly represent management in connection with employment and benefits-related litigation, corporate and governmental investigations, executive compensation and counselling projects.